


The Greyest Timeline

by Ilthit



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Sad Ending, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:50:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abed went back to falafel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greyest Timeline

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Reference to eating disorder.

Abed went back to falafel.

His father's business had picked up in recent years, despite having had to hire cousin Ibrahim for actual money as the day shift cook. From eking out an existence on the edges of the local cut-throat fast food business, Gobi's was now in direct rivalry with the Taj Mahal on Main Street. 

There were a few ways this could play out in a film, but it would require a conflict in the form of, say, competition for sponsorship of a local  ~~college~~  event. A local event. With a cast of Palestinians and Indians, they'd have to think outside of mainstream, but some patterns were universal. Still. Film festivals and home box office at best on the domestic market. 

It was easy to get back into the rhythm. Mix, fry, freeze, defreeze, hurry up. His mind was elsewhere. The hard part was when the day slowed down after lunch and Ibrahim started talking about football. 

-

Annie didn't like the way he turned on the TV set as soon as he got home, but then Annie was spending less and less time at the apartment. She had sales conferences now, and late nights, and business trips to the coast. She was making too much money to keep sharing a dingy apartment in the second worst part of town, but Annie was stubborn and scared and they both knew they were fast becoming orphans of a new kind. If the family of the 21st century was made up of friends, theirs was dying out. 

Sometimes she'd come and sit with him on the couch. She might even get caught up in the movie, lay her head on his shoulder and her fingers against his wrist, gentle, never grabbing, giving him the option to move. 

-

Jeff updated his Instagram with photos of tiny, intricately laid-out meals. He was living in Boston now, working for a do-gooder law firm headed by a pair of eccentric husbands. Abed assumed they would turn out to be a front for money-laundering, but he was trying not to make too many predictions these days.

Britta had gone after him a few months later, drawn by that barbed wire connection that would never make either of them happy. Her Instagram was a collection of blurry photos of cats and architecture, with the occasional set of grainy shots from underground concerts, hopped-up digital romanticism that she only pretended to understand. She was drinking more and smoking more and had been photographed by HONY on a weekend trip to New York, wrapped in tight black pleather with her hair streaked blue, bleary-eyed and grinning. She seemed - not hopeful, but active.

Abed didn't like to think that activity without direction could be another form of stasis. 

-

Abed changed his clothes after work because Rachel didn't like the smell of the kitchen. It wasn't much to ask. They met on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings, and it was becoming harder and harder not to cling to her so tightly she'd start to struggle. He did his best, and she kissed his forehead and let him rest on her breast while they talked about the shifting definitions of genre. She helped him remember who he was. 

She only had a fourth of him, because if he gave her any more, he'd have nothing left for himself.  ~~He needed that for when it was her turn to leave.~~  

-

Troy never came back.

They'd all thought that, apart, the two of them would each grow a new arm, leg, lung and kidney to replace what had been lost, through some metaphorical nanotechnology of experience. Perhaps one of them had. All that had grown in Abed's empty space was a pocket universe of cardboard figures and might-have-beens. It was familiar, at least. He'd been less than whole before. He could get used to it again.

-

Jeff made it to Thanksgiving at Shirley's despite two pending cases. He spent the first half hour shouting into his phone. Britta was still in Peru. 

Shirley had recently reconciled with her folks, and between her and Andre's side of the family, the house was jam-packed with people none of  ~~what was left of~~  the Greendale family knew. Shirley was thinner these days, having taken up WeightWatchers as well as her new mega-church's newsletter, to "keep busy" now that she was a full-time mom again. It made her look older, but her smile never wavered, perfect glossy lips drawn back over the grimace that humankind had chosen to communicate pleasure with. Abed spent some time talking to Elijah until they disagreed about Marvel vs. DC film franchises. 

-

In another timeline, he proposed to Rachel the day after Annie moved out. 

"Seems logical," she said, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Cohabitation was always in the cards, and there's no reason now not to split the rent." 

"Also, I--" 

He frowned. He couldn't say it. He'd meant to. It was in the script. 

He couldn't say it because it was true. 

She smiled. "Me, too." That was how he knew it wasn't the timeline they'd started with. In this one, there was a future.

-

In the first timeline, Rachel transferred to Minnesota after being offered a position in a five-year project though a family contact, studying effects of mild forms of short and long term social isolation. They followed each others' blogs. There wasn't any point, now, in telling her he loved her. In a way he was relieved.

He had a chunk of himself still left, and it was the core. As might-have-beens diminished with time, the empty space began to collapse into itself. He was fine. He had himself, and he took care of himself. That was the point of being a grown-up, wasn't it? And there would always be TV.  

Ibrahim still would not shut up about football.


End file.
